How to Make a Root Cellar From an Old Freezer

Here's a 'green' gardening tip to make a root cellar to store our garden produce over winter without electricity or a cellar. Textbooks tell us to keep hard fruit and vegetables in 'a dry dark cool place just above freezing'. Problem is, cellars and cool places rarely exist in today's urban centrally-heated homes.

So one year I stored a glut of potatoes in my unheated greenhouse - in a disused chest freezer. Didn't the freezer condense the humidity from the potatoes and rot them? No, because I piled the potatoes and the freezer lined with thick bundles of newspapers. We were still eating (almost) perfect potato nine months later.

You can add your own root cellar in any outdoor area, in the city, with a discarded refrigerator or freezer. And if you garage, maybe you can not hide your greenhouse in a cold again?

I suspect that most gardeners use their years cold greenhouse, only half. In temperate Climates, comes into its own only in the spring, when dual-cure a cold frame or from plants that grow on tender plants in our own, we have germinated.

Is full by June and August, our cucumbers are growing from the roof. Since October, we will develop a refuge for old bags, empty flower pots and children's bikes.

Textbook authors tell us that we are growing lettuce and Chinese, and more, all winter in an unheated>greenhouse. We could force rhubarb, strawberries and new potatoes for Christmas, just by putting in a little ceramic heater to keep out the frost. But do we do it?

Meanwhile, if we've been diligent elsewhere in the garden we have several bagfuls of potatoes, carrots, onions and other embarrassing gluts to store safely through the winter.

Solution? Turn your greenhouse - at least, part of it - into a vegetable storage area, a root cellar.

Take a large freezer...

Take a large discarded freezer or tall refrigerator. You'll find them at city recycling yards, either free or for a few dollars to the site attendant. Put one in the centre aisle of your greenhouse, laid on its back.

Remove and retain any interior trays or shelves. They make excellent pots or trellises for next season. Put back the lid and prop it open one inch for ventilation. Be sure to disable the lock, of course, if there's any risk that children or old people may play hide and seek in there. You now have the perfect insulated winter storage box for tubers, hard fruits and anything else you'd keep in a root cellar.

Pack tubers in dry compost, ancient leaves, straw, wood shavings or sand. Apples and pears do well in dried marestail fronds or bracken, in my experience. And check the contents regularly to remove anything that's starting to rot.

It doubles as a cold frame

If your freezer 'root cellar' is in a greenhouse and you've eaten the contents by early spring, the freezer can do extra service as a cold frame. Remove the lid, put pots of compost inside and grow extra-early peppers and tomatoes. Their roots gain the benefit of the wall insulation and the freezer's white interior will reflect light back onto the plants.

Indeed, you could take the white lid off and lean it along the darkest side of your greenhouse in spring to throw welcome light back onto the plants.

What an asset is a dead freezer, when re-used as a root cellar! And how useful a cold greenhouse becomes, when it is equipped with a freezer!